The Transnational and Totality, A Brief Comment

“In my use of the theory of transnationalism, I align with Fredric Jameson’s view that capitalism can be considered a totalizing system when globalization regards cultural dominants valued by various regional, national, and local cultures solely as hindrances to discard or overturn.(1) Otherwise, simply stating euphorically that cultural exchange--in this case the inspiration, production, and distribution of cinema--is a two-way street, offers too much latitude for global capitalism to disguise its dominance and maintain the unequal power relations it has produced.” 

(1) please see Fredric Jameson’s discussion of totality in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke UP, 1992.

-- from James Wicks, Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 1970s, HKUP 2014. “Introduction,” xix.